Well, He was Just Seventeen
by ebhg
Summary: While snuggling Bella, Edward ruminates on how much she has changed him. Written for the An Exploration of the Senses Contest sponsored by cdunbar and helliex88. Edward's point of view, naturally:D
1. Chapter 1

**An Exploration of the Senses Contest**

**Voting will begin September 1st and end September 15th.**

**Title: Well, He Was Just Seventeen…**

**Pen Name: edward-bella-harry-ginny**

**Sense: Touch**

**Genre: Romance/Comfort**

**Characters: Edward/Bella**

**Thanks go again to Justine Lark, who gave me the heads up on the contest. She and I also had a conversation a ways back regarding Edward's potential ticklishness...I'll let you read more to answer that question... Gleena also deserves a mention and my thanks, for being all kinds of awesomeness :) They are both excellent writers; check out their stuff!**

**I cannot be remiss in thanking ebhg's personal edward (aka the hubby) for betaing this extremely last-minute entry:) He really is my personal Edward;)**

**And of course, Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight.**

* * *

**Well, He was Just Seventeen**

The morning sun had yet to rise. Renesmee still slumbered in her bed, dreaming of the hunt we had come home from the previous afternoon. Bella curled more snugly into my side, tracing the length of my collarbone with just her fingertips while simultaneously running her toes lightly over the top of my foot. The sensation was curious; I couldn't remember being ticklish as a human, though the input that my brain was processing was something that I had not felt in all my time as a vampire.

For eighty-seven years, I despised the feeling of tactile stimulation; I avoided it as a general rule. I stiffened with each restraining touch from Carlisle in my first year as a vampire. He had been alone for so long, he craved the sort of physical connection between father and son that I had known with my human father. It pained me to hear his hurt thoughts when he felt my body involuntarily reject his touch, though I could not move past it enough to embrace the man that I now saw as father.

Waking up to this existence had caused my senses to flare to a flashpoint as I was suddenly able to take in a broader spectrum of stimuli. While I had been amazed by my sharpened eyes and my acute ears, nothing had prepared me for the constant feedback that I felt from my now-hypersensitive nerve endings within my skin. The tactile torment became second only to the torture of the mundane thoughts that inundated me at every moment.

Though my skin was now hard and impenetrable, it was absolutely tingling under the cotton hospital-issue pajamas. The homespun fabric had felt soft and comfortable when I had pulled them on just days before my change, but to my newly transfigured skin, they felt rough and abrasive.

I was momentarily distracted from my musings as Bella shifted her fingers from my collarbone to my sternum. She was tracing words and intricate designs across my skin, invisible to all but her. The silky texture of her fingertips juxtaposed the memory of the rough pajamas. Bella's ministrations reminded me just how far I had come in accepting physical affections.

As my newborn period faded and I became more accustomed to the heightened sensations, I was more readily able to tolerate more tactile input. Then, Esme had joined our family. If Carlisle had been disappointed by my lack of physical affection, Esme was devastated. When I could no longer stand to overhear her morose thoughts, I would allow her a hug, fighting the impulse to stiffen and run the entire time.

I couldn't remember being held and loved by Elizabeth Masen, though I was sure that it hadn't been a strict Victorian upbringing that caused the lack of memories; they had faded far too quickly after my week-long fever-induced delirium ended in three days of pure hell. The images that Carlisle had thought of at my request showed my human mother lovingly tending to my wasted body, though I could not remember the feel of her touch, nor could I remember enjoying it.

Rosalie never dared to touch me; not after our disastrous first meeting. The only thing she touched me with was the vitriol of her thoughts. Emmett, on the other hand, never took no for an answer. He was determined to grab me in a brotherly bear hug every time he set eyes upon me for the first year, which often led to wrestling matches that destroyed the furniture as well as the house we lived in.

I was certain that it was a product of Emmett's having grown up in a household with many siblings, but I had been an only child in an upper-middle-class family. I was neither prepared for it, nor accepting of it. My never returning the gesture didn't have any effect on my boisterous brother, and I suspected that he had taken it upon himself to get me to "loosen up" as his thoughts often confirmed.

Jasper was always the most understanding of my desire for distance. Having a difficult and often invasive gift of his own made him appreciate my longing for solitude. Rarely did he ever initiate our occasional wrestling match; Emmett was generally the instigator and willing sparring partner.

Alice was never one to give heed to my preferences. She grabbed, pulled, hit, shoved, and hugged me without hesitation. Strangely enough, she was the closest to me of all my siblings, regardless of her issues with personal space.

Thankfully, humans instinctively shied away from us. Though Jessica Stanley and Lauren Mallory had not been the first to fantasize about running their hands through my hair and picturing me in their lewd fantasies, never had any female been brave or foolish enough to actually make physical contact.

Except one.

Bella had awoken a side of me that I had not known I possessed. The urge to touch, caress, and feel her silky-smooth skin had been so foreign to me in those first weeks of knowing her, I couldn't place what it was that I was feeling until Jasper had to take Alice hunting alone three times in one week. Alice's smug thoughts at my realization of those impulses had made me consider moving into Bella's room permanently.

Alice's resultant vision had certainly cleared my mind of that thought.

Feeling Bella's touch, lying in her embrace and enjoying her kisses had given me new perspective in my existence; I could no longer get enough of the tactile contact that I had scoffed at and ridiculed my family for. I understood what it was that kept them continually seeking their mate's physical presence.

Now that Bella was my wife, my mate, and the mother of my child, I sought her every moment that she was away. I yearned for her touch and her gentle caresses every time she was separated from me. I became more irritable and jittery when Bella wasn't in touching distance; more than any of my brothers or my father had been when they had been in the same stage with their mates. Carlisle had originally surmised that my youth had made it impossible for me to bond with a mate. Now, my father jokingly theorized that my age was adding to my extreme need for physical contact with my mate. That fact was something that Emmett gleefully teased me about every time Bella and I were parted.

Thankfully, he never subjected my Bella to half of what went through his head. Just last week while my brothers and I had been hunting, Emmett had pondered aloud how much more active his physical relationship with Rosalie would be if he had been just seventeen when he was changed.

Emmett and the forest would eventually recover from my very physical response to his goading, but until that time, there would be a new meadow north of Forks. And Emmett would invariably demand a rematch when it had.

"What has your brow so tensed-up this morning?" my Bella asked, breaking into my thoughts.

"Emmett," was my only explanation. Bella's eyes grew wide, and she instantly sat up and looking for her clothes.

"Is he coming here? Can you hear him? How long till he gets here?" Bella was frantically searching the pile next to our bed, only to discover that her clothes were no longer wearable. A brief glare in my direction for my impatience earlier caused me to chuckle. My laughter finally broke through her frenzy.

"What is so funny about Emmett bursting in on us? Do you want to give him more ammunition?" Bella demanded with a quirked eyebrow. Level-headed newborn she may be, but her moods were still easily shifted.

"No, Love. I was just thinking about touch, and how much I love to caress you, and hold you, and how much you've changed me, and it reminded me of a moment with him last week." Bella snorted.

"Your new meadow, you mean?" My rueful expression gave her all the answer that she needed. "Well, you _are_ seventeen, love. Can you imagine Emmett and Rosalie at that age? We'd never be able to live in the same house as them, not unless we wanted to give Ness the Talk at two years old…" Bella laughed as she said it, then trailed off at my shocked expression.

"How did you know what Emmett had said?" I spluttered.

"Alice."

Her one word answer was all I needed.

"Esme agreed with her though…apparently you are much more affectionate with your mother and sisters than you ever were before you met me."

"Esme was there, as well?" I asked, mortified. Bella bit her lip sheepishly, and then she lifted her shield and showed me the whole embarrassing conversation. I growled, thinking that I'd have to have a talk with Alice before I grabbed Bella and began tickling her mercilessly.

"I'll show you how affectionate I can be, Love."

And I did.

* * *

**A/N: Thanks for reading! Any Beatles fan worth their salt should recognize the title;) **

**Voting for the contest is September 1-15, on Helliex88's profile: www. fanfiction. net/u/1779141/helliex88 (Remember to remove the spaces)**

**Please review; I do reply:) **

**ebhg:)**


	2. Tickle Me Edward

**Tickle Me Edward**

**A/N: Thank you Justine Lark and Gleena for once again acting as my lovely Betas:) I also want to thank giselle-lx for giving us Edward's four-day transformation in her awesome story Ithaca is Gorges.**

**I own nothing:(**

* * *

Dawn finally broke through the thin summer clouds; faint beams of sunlight shone through the gauzy curtains that covered our window. I held Bella to my side, feeling sated after showing her the depth of my affections once again.

The soft tendrils of sunshine reached us lying as we were on the bed, causing Bella's unclothed arm to shimmer. Though she was rapidly closing in on the first anniversary of her change, she was still fascinated with the way her skin scintillated in the sun. I watched as my wife lifted her wrist and, not for the first time, studied the marks that had been left upon her skin by my teeth. Invariably, this led to her inspection of the other scars that had been left on her otherwise blemish-free skin.

I smiled as I recalled the first time she had really scrutinized all of them, shortly after her change.

"_Edward? __Why don't you have any bites on your wrists?" Bella asked me, __weaving our fingers together and __comparing her wrists __to mine as we __moved out of Nessie's recently finished nursery and into our bedroom in the cottage for the night._

"_Carlisle didn't bite my wrists," I explained simply._

"_Why not?" __Bella asked curiously._

"_Do you recall what Carlisle said when he explained why he decided to change me?" I asked in response. Bella's face wrinkled in concentration. She had uncommonly good recall of her human memories, but the probability of her remembering the details of a conversation from an otherwise eventful __night that took place nearly a year before her change __was_ _slim._

"_Your mother…she said something to him…she had green eyes, like yours…you were dying of the Spanish Influenza…something lingered…everything else is fuzzy…" Bella admitted. I was impressed that she had remembered even that much. I was admittedly touched that she __had focused on __the color of my human eyes more than the circumstances of my change. __I understood many times over that she had chosen this life for me, and our love, but it was a striking reminder that immortality was the least of her motivations in joining me in this life._

"_Other than the fact that my eyes were once green, Carlisle told you a few other things that night. One of which was that he wasn't entirely sure of how the transformation was instigated. He settled on recreating the wounds that he had received the night that he was attacked."_

_Bella's eyes narrowed at my explanation, releasing my hand to quietly shut our door. "What does that mean?" she asked, turning to face me with her hands on her hips. Wordlessly, I __unbuttoned __my shirt, recalling our first trip to the meadow __with a small smile. Her human eyes wouldn't have detected the scars that remained from my transformation, but now her eyes would be able to see them __as well_ _as __the others __that I had acquired over the years. __Her eyes widened as she __studied my neck __for the first time with immortal eyes._

_She __was instantly beside me, __turning __my head to the side __to __take __in the __faint __trail of bite marks that began under my left ear and wrapped __downwards __around my neck, ending just over my collarbone on the right side. Her mouth fell open in astonishment_ _before she let out a low growl. I hastened to alleviate her very newborn reaction._

"_Carlisle didn't know how much venom was required or that there was a more __effective __method of delivering __it. He had never witnessed another change, not even in Volterra."_

"_I remember…Carlisle said it…'was more painful and lingering than necessary...' What does that mean?" Bella repeated, __begging me with her eyes. I hesitated to explain, but at the __feral look on her face, I couldn't __hold back._

"_In comparison to the amount of venom that I used for your change, the amount that Carlisle delivered to me was a mere fraction. By the time he realized his error, my blood vessels had closed off, and my change took somewhat longer than is typical."_

"_Somewhat longer? __This isn't __a __time __to __hold back, Edward. How much longer? Six __hours?_ _Ten? __Tell me, please," Bella whispered the last, crumbling my resolve to keep from her __what I knew would bruise her tender heart._

"_Carlisle estimated that his own change took approximately seventy-four __hours. My own took closer to ninety."_

"_Ninety?! __That is nearly four days, Edward," Bella whispered in a tight voice, caressing the lines that marred my skin at my neck. __"It's so faint…my scars…Jasper's…they are so noticeable, now that my eyes can see more…why is this one so light?"_

"_I've always assumed that it was the smaller amount of venom used; as you know, it isn't the injury that scars. It's the venom," I explained. __Then Bella allowed her fingertips to slide along my shoulders, pushing my __shirt entirely off. Her fingers brushed against a __more evident __scar that encompassed my left shoulder. "What happened here?" she asked._

"_I can't rival Jasper for the number of scars he has, but I have __helped to control three newborns, one of whom is much larger than me," I explained._

"_Emmett?!" __Bella __asked, __the surprise evident in her tone._

"_He was an impossibly powerful __newborn, as you can imagine. It took all four of us to control him at his worst during his first year. Being the fastest, there were a few times that I bore the brunt of his frustrations when he was __derailed from his urges. __He of course, __was very remorseful for it. __It's water under the bridge."_

_Bella's eyes were wide as she took in my words. I wished yet again to know what her thoughts contained, and what she would ask next as she moved further down my limb and moved on to explore my other arm._

"_What is this?" Bella pointed out a mark on my right forearm, __more a __gash __than a __bite-mark, but still obviously __made by venomous vampire teeth._

"_Defensive wound." I attempted to deflect her curiosity. I didn't think that Bella would be very pleased about the __details __of that particular blemish._

"_Edward," Bella said warningly. I valued our alone-time, and what occupied those hours, __enough to not tempt fate by toying with a newborn vampire. Even one __who was __as steady as my wife._

"_Victoria," was my one-word answer. The anger was overflowing from her, causing Bella's body to shake with her aggression. "She's nothing but ash, scattered in the wind, Love," I soothed, reaching out to brush the tension from her brow. Bella's swift movement took me by surprise; she gathered me into her arms and nearly crushed me in her desperation._

"_You were hurt, and you didn't tell me…"_

"_Bella, this was nothing. It was mostly healed before I even removed her pitiful head from her shoulders. __You needn't worry about it, Love."_

_Once again, my wife surprised me, pulling away for a brief moment before trailing feather-light kisses over each of the scars that littered my body._

"_There. All better," Bella said, causing my mouth to erupt into a crooked grin._

"_Do I get to return the favor?" I asked._

"_I was hoping you might feel that way," Bella teased. I grasped her wrist to me first, running my nose over my bite-mark. It was a bit larger than the others, as I had purposely bitten over __the scar she had received in Phoenix, obliterating from my wife's skin any last reminder of __the experience. Just as Bella pulled in a ragged breath, I pressed my lips to __my __brand upon her, meeting her wide, __lust-darkened eyes with my own before pulling away._

"_One down…" I murmured._

I never made it any farther than her other wrist before Bella had pounced upon me. The memory of that night caused a smug smile to spread across my lips.

"What are you thinking of that has you smiling like the Cheshire Cat?" Bella asked, laughing. Her fingers were tracing over my collarbones again.

"Just the night that I showed my scars to you," I explained.

"Really, now…" Bella's tone was playful.

"Yes. Especially what happened after."

"Careful, Edward. Renesmee won't be asleep that much longer."

"I can't help that you are irresistible," I replied. Bella's hands moved to my sides, continuing the invisible design that she had been tracing on my chest.

"Irresistible? I'm to blame that you have no self-control any longer?"

"I can't be held accountable for my actions when you do such things to me," I argued, fighting the undeniable, yet completely foreign urge to fidget beneath Bella's ministrations. My mind was having a hard time processing the sensation, which astounded me. It was growing, magnifying with each stroke and brush of her fingertips along my ribcage. My body was tense, ready to spring like the cats I preferred to hunt, but I was frozen beneath my wife's hands. The sensation continued to build, rising beneath her wicked fingertips until my breaths were coming in short gasps as I tried to process the stimulation.

Bella's hands moved ever lightly, ever lower, until she reached my hipbone; suddenly, the tension coiled within me erupted. I writhed with the sensation, unable to put a name to the deliciously unfamiliar torture. My beloved's face was smugly satisfied. Triumphant, even. She was biting her lip, attempting to quell the giggles that were so close to erupting from her lips.

That was all the impetus I needed. In some corner of my otherwise overwhelmed senses, I realized that I had ground my teeth together in an attempt to contain what I now let loose.

I laughed, unable to stop myself. I refused to classify it as a giggle. I did not giggle. But Bella had coaxed the most full-bodied, rich laughter from me that I could ever remember. I supposed I _was_ ticklish…Then I realized that I could never let that fact leave this room. That sort of information in the wrong hands…Emmett's…could be disastrous.

"Say uncle…" Bella's smooth voice intoned, interrupting my internal crisis.

"Never!" I panted, paralyzed by the stimulus. Then I came to my senses enough to become cognizant of the fact that Bella was using her newborn strength against me, holding both my hands pinned against my chest. "I'd rather not think of any kin at the moment…"

My response surprised Bella thoroughly enough that she loosened her grip on my hands, allowing me to roll us, reversing our position.

"How about I see what I can make _you _say?" I taunted. The gleam in her eye was all I needed. I knew what she would be saying. And it wouldn't be 'uncle.'

* * *

**Thanks for reading! Please Review!**


End file.
